Sound Check presents: The Spinto Band

They're from Wilmington, Delaware, and they're here to. . . tell us about their band, what they like to do on the internet, and educate us about other wonderful things that come from The First State. The Spinto Band will play an indie rock show at The Iron Horse on Thursday, June 8, in support of their Bar/None Records release Nice and Nicely Done. Band member Jon Eaton indulges my questions.

You are a pretty young band. From what I read many/all of you are still in college? Are you going to different colleges and how do you manage to keep it all together?

The band recently (as of last December) graduated/took a break from college so that's one less thing to worry about nowadays. However, for a long time we would just play weekend shows and study in car rides to gigs during what we called "Spinto Band: The College Years."

From where do you draw your musical influences?

We have many influences all of which may or may not be recognizable in our music. One of the more local influences we have currently been throwing around in interviews is the band Ween. They are from New Hope, Pennsylvania, and everyone probably knows about them. They did a lot of great basement recordings that we listened to during the peak of our basement recording days. The Pod made me realize that music can be just about anything audible. . . that was a pretty important discovery.

You seem to have picked up a big following in Europe. Know how that happened?

Europe is quite different from the states in my opinion. To them, guitar bands are the Nellys and 50 Cents. I guess that doesn't really make sense, but their radio and music shops are more pop focused. Nothing against Fitty though.

You're from Delaware. What other great things have come out of the First State?

Well, besides the whole Spinto Band, Delaware has also produced a few great actors including Fast Times at Ridgemont Highs Judge Reinhold and Ryan Phillipe of Cruel Intentions. We are big fans of both.

While searching the net I couldn't find the infamous Sears ad, which uses your song "Oh Mandy," but I did find a bunch of videos of your live performances. What do you think about the proliferation of music on the web vs. the Sears commercial? Which has contributed more to the buzz around the band?

We all learned a lot from that Sears ad. It played for maybe 10 days, but it has remained the focal point for many press write-ups since. We figured after the 10 days were up, people would just forget about it and we would be able to pay off some debt we had incurred. We were wrong. It doesn't bother any of us too much, but we just keep it in the back of our minds when other similar offers come to the table. As far as using the web, its really fun to just type Spinto into a search engine and see what comes up. We have made many fans and friends over the internet, who have in turn, turned us onto great music. That's what it's there for. Well, that and pornography, and, I guess, checking to see if the Phillies won.